Here’s an example of what dissenting opinions have to face here in what was once called the land of poets and thinkers. (In climate science Germany is more the land of dogmatists and intolerants, unfortunately. But as I’ve said, that’s slowly changing).

Taking apart “climate science” is not a real achievement in itself. The science has been crumbling rapidly for quite some time now. Dr Kirstein’s real achievement in this story is, however, daring to speak up against the climate science religion. To do so in Germany, one has to expect multiple character assassination attempts. Georg Hoffmann attempts just that, ridiculing not only Dr Kirstein, but the University of Leipzig as well.

Kirstein’s seminar at the University of Leipzig did indeed upset the climate clergy, not surprisingly, and so they have sent out an underling, Georg Hoffmann, to attack, ridicule and attempt to slap down Kirstein and the University of Leipzig, and it should all serve as a reminder to anyone else who might dare to speak up. Hoffmann wrote his hit piece yesterday at his blog site. The title in English:

The highly acclaimed Climate Hack Of The Month Award for September 2010 goes to Professor Kirstein and his employer, the University of Leipzig. The claim made by Kirstein that “Greenland was mostly ice-free during the Middle Ages” belongs to the Top Ten of probably the most senseless statements ever made on the subject of climate change. Congratulations from the jury.

Here we have a person childishly ridiculing a distinguished professor and an entire university. Seldom do we witness such hubris in Europe, except of course in “climate science”. This is precisely what “climate science” dissenters have to deal with regulary. And such attacks are generously funded by European governments.

I watched the entire Kirstein presentation, and everyone knows what he meant with Greenland. Hoffmann is simply hiding behind his computer in Paris, or wherever, and attacking from the safety of his hinterhalt, like a true coward. He nitpicks and takes things out of context. Of course he cherry-picks his data at every opportunity, and applies post-normal science throughout.

Yet, we all know that if called out to debate face to face in public, people like Hoffmann are the last to show up. Open debate for post-normal scientists is foreign, and it has proven to be nothing but disastrous in the past.

I read the comments over there. I find it amusing that they call us “Klimaleugner”; which is the literal german translation of “climate denier”. Both terms are funny insofar as i don’t deny that there is climate.

Somebody in the comments complains that the quote from S. Schneider that Kirstein cited is taken out of context. Now, when i heard the quote the first time – “honesty or efficiency” – i looked around to find context because i wanted to make sure it’s not taken out of context. I eventually did find context; and it didn’t change the meaning of the quote. To my amazement.

It’s a different thing with the Maurice Strong quote – bringing about the end of industrialized civilisation – Kirstein didn’t mention that Strong suggested this as a theme for an SF novel. IMHO one should avoid this particular quote; as juicy as it is.

The sceptics are winning every debate, at any time and everywhere. That is why the AGW-believers have a strategy not ever, ever to confront a sceptic in an open debate and not to let them in on conferences or in the main stream media. They know that they will lose. Therefore, the internet is our media, and eventually there will be more scientists, more public and, of course, more politicians on our side. Science will survive in the end.
—————————————–Reply: You’re absolutely right, As long as they keep running and hiding, no one will take them seriously . – PG

I took my time to watch the video and I was really flabbergasted about how intimidated the speakers felt.

This is Germany 2010, 60 years after the collapse of the NAZI’s and 20 years after the collapse of the DDR.

To see the same forces that kept the German scientific establishment hostage during these dark periods return in our times with such an effect is a real shock to me.

This motivates me more than ever to address this issue at every possible opportunity.

I don’t know if you can retrieve their e-mails but I think it is a good idea if we send the organizers of this seminar a salute as a clear sign of support.

I also propose that we (Pierre and the posters on this blog) hold a petition and send a clear message to Angela Merkel and tell her that we (international community) have been shocked to find a climate of intimidation within the Scientific community directed at those scientist who shed doubts on the theory of AGW and the IPCC and that we are not going to accept that.

I also propose we send a copy to the president of germany and the EU and publish the letter on this website.

I am outraged to see this happen in Germany.

I spend a decent part of my life with the Air Force during the Cold War and I was stationed in Germany during that time.

I did not go through that period to see the ghost of totalitarianism that always starts with intimidation return during my life time.
Especially now it hapens in Germany.

Angela Merkel, born and raised on the other (wrong) side of the Iron Curtain, holder of a scientific degree, and head of this Government should be the first person to understand this and it really bugs me that this fallacy is taking place under her leadership, no matter her personal, scientific or political opinion.
She has to address the subject.

I think Pierre will support this initiative and I would like to invite all posters here to leave a response to hear your opinion.

I’m not sure a petition would be so effective, though I’d sign it if one were writtten up. I think the best is to send a short letter to the higher ups. Or better yet, call them up and advise them to look at the facts.

Günther,
As I’ve proposed to Georg below, why not debate all this in public then? It’s easy to label someone’s words gibberish. But when these accusers refuse to show up in a public debate, then it becomes obvious who’s really talking gibberish.
You all sound like the coward boxer proclaiming to the world you’d beat Klitschko to a pulp, yet are nowhere to be seen when the opening bell rings. You can run, but you can’t hide.

I also suggest that you send a complaint letter to Obama and the pope. This scandal should not be swept under the carpet.

I gave a long list of errors and misunderstandings in the presentation of Kirstein. He can correct it and learn something for the next time. No acknowledgments needed.

Another question (a real one): What means “Greenland was mostly icefree” (Kirstein) really and what does everyone know for what “Greenland” here stands. Is it not the physical place “Greenland” but some sort of spiritual “Greenland” we carry in our hearts?

Well, Georg, I suggest you debate this issue in public. Surely it would end up like Klitschko’s latest fight – right? After all, you experts are right about everything – so where’s the problem? What could possibly go wrong? What do you say?

“Another question (a real one): What means “Greenland was mostly icefree” (Kirstein) really and what does everyone know for what “Greenland” here stands. Is it not the physical place “Greenland” but some sort of spiritual “Greenland” we carry in our hearts?”

So you’re saying this is a real question but you go on to spew sarcasm. That’s very much like the style of your writing on your blog. I have the feeling you feel threatened.

other than you claim, Kirstein did qoute Stephen Schneider out of context. And yes, the sentence in question does have a different meaning when you read the complete paragraph it has been torn from. Even if you only add the next 6 words following the sentence that is exclusively quoted by climate deniers, it becomes crystal clear that Schneider did not say anything preposterous:

Each of us has to decide what the right balnce is between being effecitve and being honest. (Only this sentence gets quoted.)

Another serious flaw – but only one of many more – in Kirstein’s talk is his reference to Arctic sea ice cover. He oversimplifies the issue by asserting that the ice is melting in the summer and freezes again during the Arctic winter, just a “normal up and down”.

Apart from yet one more distortion of the truth, this would have been an insult to the intelligence of his audience if the audience had not consisted of just a bunch of gullible climate deniers.

Thanks for the link. Well, if the omission of the last relativation – “I *HOPE* this means being both” is such a severe distortion for you, then so be it. I think it doesn’t change a thing – the fact that a chronically alarmist scientist feels compelled to ponder the balance between being honest and being efficient tells me a lot about his character.

But we can go on and ponder the consequences of the full Schneider text.

He talks about a DOUBLE ETHICAL BIND. In other words; if you were to choose the right strategy to maximize the ethical correctness of your actions, and you have to adhere to two, not exactly identical, maxims, than what will result? I can tell you what will result because i have observed it in fitness functions of genetic algorithms. As soon as you make the individuals in a simulated evolution maximize not one, but a function of two different criteria, you will find they end up COMPROMIZING between the two criteria.

Here the late Stephen Schneider faces an audience that is (almost) 100% made up of deniers. Interestingly enough Stephen has to correct a lot of the same misconceptions that Kirstein also gets wrong in his presentation of distorted truth. The only question that remains is if Kirstein does know better or really believes what he tells his audience.

What is it that we are denying?
Mr Schneider also said he would slaughter anyone in a debate. But when challenged, he ran. Sure there have been some debates, and every time the audience left more sceptical.
Sceptics are not the ones trying to prove something, so it is not up to us to be perfect. We only need to be perfect once – and the game is over. The warmists need to be perfect every time. The problem is that the warmists have been wrong (and dishonest) multiple times, and so the theory is completely discredited. It’s a joke.
All one has to do is look back at historical correlations (and resist the urge to rewrite them).

@Gosselin
It would be a great pleasure to discuss with you or Kirstein or whoever in public. No problem.
But since you wrote:
“everyone knows what he meant with Greenland. ”
I thought I ask you for some guidance? So what Greenland is it if not Greenland?

Günther, there is no evidence for AGW. The correlation between rising CO2 and temperatures over the last 10 years is broken. Trenberth’s missing heat, the missing hot spot in the troposphere. And the models can’t forecast anything. You can’t hindcast the MWP with the models because they’ve been tuned for CO2.

It’s all a shambles. There are more holes in AGW than any skeptic could wish for. It’s a fairytale. Where are the monster storms? You might say, this will all happen real soon now. I don’t believe it. You can’t prove it. It’s only soothsaying, based on the observation that CO2 has an LWIR absorption band.

“The correlation between rising CO2 and temperatures over the last 10 years is broken.”

So you also buy into that rubbish that temperatures have not risen over the last 10 years? BTW, it used to be “since 1998”, but meanwhile the deniers have decided that “last ten years” sounds more “credible”.

Apart from that you xseem to suggest there should always be a close correspondence between CO2 levels and temperature if the “theory” is right. Well, you only display one-dimensional thinking, since CO2 ist an improtant but by no means the only parameter that influences temperature.

“It’s all a shambles. There are more holes in AGW than any skeptic could wish for. It’s a fairytale.”

Nothing but wishful thinking on your part. Go and read AR4, “The Physical Science Basis” and then, may be, come back with some more knowledge instead of your denialist prejudices.

“Well, you only display one-dimensional thinking, since CO2 ist an improtant but by no means the only parameter that influences temperature.”

The AGW hypothesis states that an enhanced greenhouse effect leads to a radiative imbalance. This should lead to a slow “heat jam”, right? According to the AGW theory, less energy is radiated to space than is incoming, – Hansen and Schmidt did some work to prove this, but they only used models, so sorry, i discount that as simulations – so the energy must end up somewhere. We should be seeing it as rising temperature somewhere. You know as well as i that it has not been found.

And you offer nothing but handwaving and your special kinds of compliments as an explanation.

Sorry. BTW, I’ve read the AR4; and while there is of course LWIR absorption (and re-emittance) by CO2, this is only one piece of a dynamical system; and Ferenc Miskolczi has a very nice theory that does away with the, excuse the harsh words, one-dimensional thinking of Arrhenius.

During the Medieval Warmth period Greenland was warmer than it is today. This allowed the Vikings to start some coastal communities that lived from agriculture (wheat and lifes tock)
400 years later these communities collapsed due to the return of colder conditions.

This is all well documented by research and geological findings
In all about 1900 scientific reports and publications support a Greenland warmer than today.

so you seriously think that a youtube video be some global warming denier disproves anything?

Interesting “theory” indeed.

“The entire theory behind Anthropogenic Global Warming is dead.
All claims in IPCC 2007 AR4 have been debunked from A-Z.”

As a matter of fact he opposite is true: all the false claims made by global warming denialists have been debunked by the IPCC and the ongoing research of hard-working scientists all over the world.

Not a single association of scientists anywhere in the world shares the distorted views of the denialists.

There is not even one honest scientist who supports the denialist stance, which is not surprising since the denialists hold all kinds of mutally incompatible ideas. The only thing they agree on is that they do not WANT global warming to be true.

Kirstein clearly demonstrates that denialists must revert to deception, smear and downright lies if they want to uphold their untenable position.

“Sorry. BTW, I’ve read the AR4; and while there is of course LWIR absorption (and re-emittance) by CO2, this is only one piece of a dynamical system; and Ferenc Miskolczi has a very nice theory that does away with the, excuse the harsh words, one-dimensional thinking of Arrhenius.”

Well, if you have read AR4 you certainly did not understand it.

Do you know that Ferenc Miskolci’s “nice theory” is not even accepted by other denialists? Please read what Roy Spencer thinks about it:

You know, Günther, you’re expecting that all skeptics agree on everything. You know, we’re not a party. We are individuals. And as the IPCC and its computer models don’t explain the last 10 or 12 years of lack of warming – really, i don’t care whether we start this interval at the super el ninjo of 1998 or just say 10 years, it’s irrelevant – we can’t expect help from the IPCC in understanding reality.

I await a serious rebuttal of Miskolczi’s paper. I still have not heard of any serious attempt. For me, his theory makes sense, and i’m impressed by the fact that he works with measurements, not only models. I don’t have to resort to personal attacks and fighting words to state that. I’m not interested in you, in Georg Hoffmann’s blog or any further results of the climate modelers – they had their day, and it didn’t work out, i’m not interested in any more soothsaying by them.

Progress on the modeling front is too slow to remove enough of the uncertainties; we can’t rely on the models – i would say, we can forget them for the next 20 years.

“so you seriously think that a youtube video be some global warming denier disproves anything?”

I really don’t appreciate your arrogant attitude.
In the film about Greenland, scientists and archeologists and solar scientists who have spend a great deal of their life on scientific research come to word. People like Willy Soon who btw has worked for the IPCC.

The fact is that IPCC AR4 is based on models.
The models are based on temperature data sets that have been corrupted.
See http://www.surfacestations.org

Michael Mann and his hockey tick graph has been trashed entirely and so are the claims made by Hanson about temperature development ansea level rise.

Other alarmist claims in AR-4 like melting ice caps, sea level rise, hurricane frequency drought, Himalayan Glacier Melt are simply not true and when fact checked proofed to be copied from WWF reports.

And you are defending this bunch of hacks that include a character like Pachauri.

Get real and open your eyes to the real objective behind this scam which is political and aimed at a complete de industrialisation of the West
in favor of a Global doctrine of totalitarians.http://green-agenda.com and UN Agenda 21

Just one of the temperature adjustments caught.
Günther Vennecke, there is no defense for this kind of fraud.
People like Anthony Watts and and the Steven Goddard are no Big Oil sponsored Deniers .
They simply don’t like to be conned and they deliver full proof evidence of the fraud that’s going on.
Time to pack your bags and find another hobby.

The Great Climate Clash
Posted on October 21, 2010 by stevengoddard
Marc Morano sent this over

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Great Climate Clash
Bigfork, MT, USA, October 20, 2010.
Is the Debate Over?

Follow this critical debate on AGW at ClimateClash.com

In a stunning rebuttal to Dr. Eric’s comments, Dr. Ed posted his

“3. Are we at an Impasse?”

where he shows how the Scientific Method handles all complexities and is the
only way to determine how nature behaves.

Dr. Ed’s first post reviewed “The Scientific Method.” Dr. Eric followed by
suggesting the problem of AGW is too complex for the scientific method.

Dr. Ed concludes with his challenge to Dr. Eric:

“A refusal by Dr. Eric to agree to using the Scientific Method as the one
and only method for verifying the AGW hypothesis, will be an admission of
defeat. This will be clear evidence that AGW is based upon pseudo-science
and is a fraud. The debate will be over.”

The Great Climate Clash is the highest attended debate on Global Warming
ever, and it is written so you can study it.

The Great Climate Clash will help voters decide how to vote on November 2,
2010.

Vaclav Klaus, the world’s most renowned climatologist, Anthony Watts who runs the best website on fairy tales and his lackey Goddard, Soon finally topped by Morano, who are you trying to impress or rather fool?

Do you not have any REAL people, not con-men, that you can refer to when you want to discuss false allegations that you rank as facts?

You are just full of climate denier worn-out lies that you keep repeating, things that have been debunked many, many times, I am sick of listening to them time and again.

Your “arguments” are an insult to any thinking person. They may be accepted by all the other morons that call themselves climate “skeptics”, people who can think for themselves do not fall for such tea-party movement trash.

Let me guess: you also believe that Earth is only 6000 years old, right?

thank you, pierre, for giving the right answer to climate warmist hysterics like günther vennecke. vennecke is by no means an expert in anything related to climate or atmosphere. in his daily life his name is wolfgang potratz and he is an teacher for english language at a grammar school in a small german town. he is an eco fundamentalist and hates nuclear power plants. he is totally ignorant in any dimension of science, just a would-like and want-be forth row fanatic of everything what comes out of a mouth of any “consensus” ipcc climatologist who deceives the public with faked temperature and sea level data.